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Elk Hollow Lodge – Property 364918
- Saratoga rental - lodge, 5 bedrooms, sleeps 18, 4 bathrooms, 1 half bath, Mountain, Balcony
- $21,000/week
- Calendar Last Updated On: Apr 17, 2014
Located 12 miles upstream of Saratoga, Wyoming on the banks of the Upper North Platte River. Elk Hollow Lodge has provided many fly fisherman peace, solitude, and...
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Hi everyone!
I have a simple question for you guys. I'm wondering what type of games you would like to see on the iPhone. Take a minut before you answer.
Ofcourse it's very much about the accelerometer. But also, would you like a game that is easy to start and quit or would you want one that you'll have to sink into, eg an rpg. Which current games do you think would fit on the iPhone. We have the obvious ones like Monkey Ball and such but what other games, and how would you convert the controls to fit the iPhone.
I'm currently interested in games that you'll be able to start and quit at anytime. Fast pased action games of some sort maybe. Also a puzzle game like Professor Layton for the DS would be cool on the iPhone. I'm tired of all the puzzle games where it's all about getting four balls in a row sort of thing. I'm sure it'll make money but it's already done and pretty boring.
So lets hear it. What type of games would you like to see for the iPhone?
Eager to hear from you guys =)

subset: commoncrawl


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James Madison hires Ohio State assistant Withers
HARRISONBURG, Va. (AP) James Madison has hired Ohio State assistant coach Everett Withers as its football coach.
Athletic director Jeff Bourse made the announcement Friday night. He says Withers returned to Ohio and will remain with the Buckeyes through the Orange Bowl against Clemson on Jan. 3 before transitioning fulltime to the Dukes.
"Everett is a proven winner and has shown his ability to lead," James Madison athletic director Jeff Bourse said in a statement. "The entire committee was incredibly impressed when we met with him."


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Not just for goths: 10 things about Vampira
It's the mid-'50s, and television is as bland as ever. Mrs. Cleaver and the nuclear family grace the screens of identical idiot boxes across the good, wholesome, U.S. of A.
Then on a dark evening, an image of a curvaceous vamp walking through a mock hallway surrounded by cheap fog machines appears on television screens. She gazes out at audiences, and when she comes face to face with the camera (and viewers) she lets out a blood curdling scream. "I am… Vampira. I hope you all had the good fortune to have a terrible week."
The woman known as Vampira was really Maila Nurmi—a young woman trying to make it in Hollywood by being hard-working, creative, and daring in any way she knew (or could learn) how. Her persona as Vampira would go on to be remembered by goths, cult film freaks, and the fashion obsessed for years to come.
1 // Birth of a Vampira
Maila Nurmi was born in Finland on December 11, 1922. She moved to the the U.S. with her family, living in both Ohio and Oregon. She later moved to NYC to study acting and finally made it to Los Angeles, where she would begin a career in Hollywood. Maila modeled for Bernard of Hollywood and Man Ray, and supported herself early in her career by working as a pin-up model and a coat-check girl.
2 // Everyday is Halloween
In 1953, Maila attended a masquerade ball dressed in a tight black Morticia-esque dress, inspired by Charles Addams's New Yorker drawings—the original Addams family. After winning first prize, she was tracked down by a television producer looking for someone to do skits and host a late night horror movie program—The Vampira Show.
3 // A Creature of Her Own Design
While Morticia Addams may have inspired Vampira's look, she was really a character all of Maila's own imagination:
"Vampira is a kind of entity, we can call her a woman even though she's androgynous… who survives in this carnal world. I, Maila Nurmi, am not."
Vampira lived through the depression; being poor, skinny, and scrawny; wearing second-hand clothes and having very low self-esteem. She needed something to cling to in such pragmatic times, so she created an imaginary image to keep her faith in the world going. The character Maila created was inspired by her fantasies and fascinations with characters such as The Dragon Lady of the Terry and The Pirates comic book series, the Evil Queen from Snow White, and silent movie star Theda Bara, the first "vamp."
4 // The Lady is a Vamp
Maila was no ghoul, taking the horror genre into her own hands and crafting her Vampira character out of a combination of sex and death. She borrowed Charles Addams's Morticia, and added elements of fetish attire and general provocativeness—a cinched 17-inch waist, a plunging neckline, fishnets, and voluptuous curves. Accessorized with a phallic cigarette holder and matching long black nails, Vampira was dressed to kill.
5 // Blacklisted (and Dressed in Black)
Maila's sex appeal was the least of Channel 7's worries—eventually The Vampira Show was cancelled due to Maila's tendency to make subversive comments, and according to newspapers at the time, her suspected left-leaning politics. Maila went on to tell the story of how she was blacklisted from television and had a horribly hard time finding work because of it: going from appearing nightly on television to living off of $13 a week.
6 // When All Else Fails, Plan 9
Out of work and desperate to support herself, Maila took a role in a production by the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr. After reading the script for a film called Grave Robbers From Outer Space, and disgusted with the lines Wood had written for her, Maila insisted on a silent role. Dressed as Vampira, and bringing a crowd to the film because of it, an undead Maila would silently walk towards the camera, arms out and ready to frighten. Her role in what would eventually be called Plan 9 From Outer Space and by critics, "the worst movie ever made," would have this image seared in the minds of cult film fans forever.
7 // Bat Your Lashes
Vampira's fashion would go on to inspire gothic ladies for years to come. Her bat-eye glasses, created in 1949 by Edward Melcarth, are an accessory (and artifact) of note. The original pair is now owned by tattoo and television star Kat Von D and recently a company created a limited edition pair of sunglasses inspired by the originals. However, vamp was not her only look. Maila played a rat-loving beat poet in the film The Beat Generation, sporting a short cropped cut and a bohemian look. Images of her with a chelsea-like hair cut (a tuft of bangs on a bald head), accessorized with elfish ears and sci-fi accessories can be found in her archives.
8 // Creatures of The Night
More than just a blood sucker, Maila was also an animal lover. Maila spent Christmas of 1956 recovering from first degree burns on her arms and hands after a fire broke out in her apartment one evening. Her cat, Ratface, was said to have helped her escape in time. She posed for pictures after the incident with bandages on her hands while holding the beloved feline.
9 // An Uncanny Resemblance
In the '80s, Maila was working with a television studio to re-vamp the Vampira character and make a comeback on the small screen. After three months, they stopped calling her to come in to the studio, and the next thing she knew, Elvira appeared. Maila tried to sue actress Cassandra Peterson unsuccessfully for eight years. Peterson gained success and fame with the character, and Maila financially gained nothing. She criticized Peterson's use of the money on "houses and red limousines," arguing that when she decided to re-visit the character she wanted to donate the profits to animal welfare.
10 // Forever Undead
By 1962 Maila's career in entertainment dwindled and she found herself laying linoleum flooring and cleaning celebrities' houses for 99 cents an hour. By the '70s she was selling handmade jewellery and clothing in her antique shop, Vampira's Attic, on Melrose Avenue.
Maila Nurmi passed from this wretched planet in 2008, leaving the world with memories, style, and a cemetery of artifacts and memorabilia that today are used in exhibits and documentaries about her life and influence.
R.I.P. Vampira.
images // courtesy Official Vampira


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Ann Marie Buerkle (R) @voteBuerkle
Politwoops no longer follows this account.What do you think of our new literature? Our volunteers will be distributing these today when they knock on http://t.co/ddcxWF2y
Sure, we all tweet things we don't men mean to share, but now politicians have no way to hide them. Discover tweets that your politicians shared and then deleted.
To meet the Twitter API Terms of Service, all deleted tweets shown here since June 22, 2012 have been reviewed and approved by the Sunlight Foundation.


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Board suspends Putnam teacher for three days
Putnam County school board members approved the three-day suspension of a middle school teacher during a regular meeting Monday evening.
The teacher, Jeff Young, will take a three-day leave without pay for violating the employee Code of Conduct and Technology Acceptance Use policy. Board members would not provide further details.
Board members approved the suspension, as well as some other personnel changes, after spending 30 minutes in a closed-door, executive session. Superintendent Chuck Hatfield wouldn't comment further, saying the decision was a personnel matter. The board will next meet at 7 p.m. March 4 at the board offices in Winfield. All meetings are open to the public.


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New homes and health centre for Wickford revealed (From Echo)
Get involved: send your pictures, video, news and views by texting ECHONEWS to 80360, or email us »
New homes and health centre for Wickford revealed
10:00am Thursday 5th December 2013 in Local News
PLANS to build a large health centre and new homes on Wickford's marketplace have finally been revealed.
Dismayed traders have been handed a letter outlining Basildon Council's plan to build a health centre on the site off Market Road – with businesses being asked to leave by August 2014.
The market is to be moved into the High Street as part of a transformation of Wickford's main shopping area.
Angry traders at the market building have claimed they won't be able to move.
The Echo understands Basildon Council will pay to build the new centre and then lease it to the NHS.
A source close to the council said the centre will cost a "substantial, seven-figure sum" and offer more health services than existing GP surgeries in the town.
A new health centre was first mooted in the doomed Wickford masterplan, in 2006.
While the market was always thought to be the Tory administration's preferred site, this is the first time it has admitted so in writing.
The cabinet will meet behind closed doors on Thursday, December 12, to discuss the health centre and homes package.
NHS England has admitted it is negotiating with the authority.
Campaigners, traders, and councillors have criticised plans to cover the market with homes.
The Tory councillor responsible for regeneration, Malcolm Buckley, claims the housing will be a necessarily evil if the town is to have an improved health facility.
He said: "The issue is, to build a health centre on this scale will cost a substantial, seven-figure sum and we can only generate that from land sales.
"This site is the only asset we have in Wickford.
"The option is either a health centre and some houses, or no health centre at all."
The Echo understands the GPs surgery, in London Road, will be relocated into the newhealth centre.
The lease on its current building is due for renewal in April.
Another GP's surgery and health centre is located in Market Road, but it is unknown if it will be affected.
Nigel Le Gresley, Ukip councillor for Wickford Castledon, said: "I have been drip-fed information about this from sources other than the council and have been fobbed off by the authority so many times, that I think it is underhand and despicable.
"At every opportunity they get these people are trying to shove houses everywhere, without the infrastructure to cope."
EXCLUSIVE pictures reveal what a revamped Wickford High Street will look like.
Leaked images, seen by the Echo, show Basildon Council's £700,000 proposals, designed to inject life into the town's main shopping area.
Until now, the council had only outlined what bosses wanted to do by next summer.
Designs obtained by the Echo show the plans include: Pedestrianising part of the High Street, moving the market to a newarea in the town centre and a new block of toilets.
Malcolm Buckley, Tory councillor responsible for regeneration, said: "The outcome will be a more pleasant area for customers and hopefully it will entice shoppers into the area.
"It will be less receptive to vehicles coming through and should make it more comfortable for shoppers.
"It's going to be a big regeneration of the High Street and something that we're very excited to bring forward."
The authority unveiled its plans to traders at a closed meeting last week.
They include moving the market into the High Street, which will include a newly christened Market Lane.
This will put new stalls in the alleyway next to the 99p store and the public toilets, which runs between the present market and the High Street.
Anewly-paved area in the High Street will have space for further stalls on market days, as well as an area for tables and chairs for businesses. New decorations, lights, and plants are also planned for the High Street, as well as shop fronts being spruced up so they fit in with the new look.
A stretch of the road will be made one-way.
The designs, from Essex County Council's consultancy team, cost about £50,000 to produce.
Work on the revamped High Street is expected to start in the newyear and be completed by early summer. The new toilets, next to Market Lane, will be completed by the end of December, costing £110,000 and replacing a building that is 60 years old.
Basildon Council is consulting with traders and residents on its Wickford plans.
Anyone who wants to give feedback can e-mail Mr Buckley on firstname.lastname@example.com don.gov.uk.
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Victor Davis Hanson is a noted historian and social critic whose philosophies are rooted in classicism, agrarianism, and military history. ...
Victor Davis HansonE-mail
The new Inquisition
April 10, 2014
What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs?
One California for me, another for thee
April 3, 2014
No place on the planet is as beautiful and as naturally rich as California. And few places have become as absurd.
Massaging of critical data undermines our society
March 27, 2014
Transparency and truth are the fuels that run sophisticated civilizations. Without them, the state grinds to a halt. Lack of trust -- not barbarians on the frontier, global warming or cooling, or even epidemics -- doomed civilizations of the past, from imperial Rome to the former Soviet Union.
Technology is not wisdom
March 20, 2014
Americans now have more computer power in their smart phones than did the Pentagon in all its computer banks just 30 years ago. We board a sophisticated jet and assume that the flight is no more dangerous than crossing the street.
Is Obama walking the trail blazed by Nixon?
March 13, 2014
What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified most means of attaining them?
Science and reason vs. political correctness
March 6, 2014
President Obama entered office promising to restore the sanctity of science. Instead, a fresh war against science, statistics and reason is being waged on behalf of politically correct politics.
America's quiver of outrage is empty
February 27, 2014
Don't step over the line and re-militarize the Rhineland. Absorbing Austria would cross a red line. Breaking up Czechoslovakia is unacceptable. Get out of Poland by the announced deadline. The rest was history.
The outdated business model of Diversity Inc.
February 20, 2014
Diversity has become corporatized on American campuses, with scores of bureaucrats and administrators accentuating different pedigrees and ancestries. That's odd, because diversity does not mean any more "variety" or "points of difference," at least as it used to be defined.
An Orwellian nation of Obamathink
February 13, 2014
The nightmare societies portrayed in the George Orwell novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" gave us the word "Orwellian." That adjective reflects a vast government's efforts not just to deceive and control the people, but also to do so by reinventing the meaning of ordinary words while rewriting the past itself.
A tale of two droughts
February 6, 2014
Despite recent sporadic rain, California is still in the worst extended drought in its brief recorded history. If more storms do not arrive, the old canard that California could withstand two droughts -- but never three -- will be tested for the first time in memory.
The poison of postmodern lying
January 30, 2014
All presidents at one time have fudged on the truth. Most politicians pad their resumes and airbrush away their sins. But what is new about political lying is the present notion that lies are not necessarily lies anymore -- a reflection of the relativism that infects our entire culture.
Robert Gates and the taint of the insider tell-all
January 23, 2014
For all hysteria over former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations. Much of "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War" is the ordinary stuff of public service.
The cowardice of the new anti-Semitism
January 16, 2014
An obscure academic organization called the American Studies Association not long ago voted to endorse a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. The self-appointed moralists were purportedly outraged over the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.
Is China copying the old imperial Japan?
January 9, 2014
In the 1920s, Japan began to translate its growing economic might -- after a prior 50-year crash course in Western capitalism and industrialization -- into formidable military power.
The year of the dud
January 2, 2014
Lots of things that should have happened in 2013 did not.
The orphaned middle class
December 26, 2013
On almost every left-right issue that divides Democrats and Republicans -- as well as Republicans themselves -- there is a neglected populist constituency. The result is that populist politics are largely caricatured as Tea Party extremism -- and a voice for the middle class is largely absent.
The lost generation: Young people have been had
December 19, 2013
There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare.
Nuclear gangbangers have upper hand on global police
December 12, 2013
The gangster state of North Korea became a nuclear power in 2006-2007, despite lots of foreign aid aimed at precluding just such proliferation -- help usually not otherwise accorded such a loony dictatorship. Apparently the civilized world rightly suspected that if nuclear, Pyongyang would either export nuclear material and expertise to other unstable countries, or bully its successful but non-nuclear neighbors -- or both.
History casts doubt upon non-aggression pact with Iran
December 5, 2013
According to our recently proposed treaty with the Iranian government, Iran keeps much of its nuclear program while agreeing to slow its path to weapons-grade enrichment. The Iranians also get crippling economic sanctions lifted.
America's coastal royalty
November 28, 2013
The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America's big decisions are made.
Obamacare-speak fails to mask an evolving fiasco
November 21, 2013
The Obama administration once gave us "man-caused disasters" for acts of terrorism and "workplace violence" for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the Obamacare disaster.
Victor Davis Hanson: America jumps off the tiger's back
November 13, 2013
The United States has ridden -- and tamed -- the wild global tiger since the end of World War II. The frantic ride has been dangerous, to us, but a boon to humanity. At the same time, America's leadership role has been misrepresented and misunderstood abroad and at home, including by some of our country's own leaders. Accordingly, our current president, Barack Obama, has decided to climb down from the tiger, with the certain consequence that it will run wild again.
Looking for a different sort of president
November 7, 2013
The second terms of the latest three presidents have not been successful. Bill Clinton was impeached after his infamous lie to Americans, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
The wages of presidential deception
October 31, 2013
By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his "credibility gap" -- the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam.
Beware the hidden costs of beautifully misnamed laws
October 24, 2013
Washington has a bad habit of naming laws by what they are not.
Obama has failed to follow his own example
October 17, 2013
Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending and the implementation of Obamacare.
Mr. Netanyahu and the end of days
October 10, 2013
So far Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's peace ruse is still bearing some fruit. President Obama was eager to talk with him at the United Nations -- only to be reportedly rebuffed, until Obama managed to phone him for the first conservation between heads of state of the two countries since the Iranian storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979.
'Game changers'
October 3, 2013
When -- not if -- is the only mystery about an Iranian nuclear bomb.
The decline of college
September 19, 2013
For the last 70 years, American higher education was assumed to be the pathway to upper-mobility and a rich shared-learning experience.
One California -- or two?
September 12, 2013
Are the recent raves about a new California renaissance true?
Same old, same old in Syria
September 5, 2013
President Obama's on-and-off-again planned American attack on Syria is nothing new. Besides its five declared wars, America has a habit of intervening all over the world.
The Israeli Spring
August 29, 2013
Israel could be forgiven for having a siege mentality -- given that at any moment, old frontline enemies Syria and Egypt might spill their violence over common borders.
Two Americas
August 22, 2013
Two quite different 21st-century Americas are emerging. The nation is not so much divided by "wars" between the rich and poor, men and women, or white and non-white. Instead, there is the world of reality versus that of triviality.
Don't know much about geography
August 15, 2013
In Sam Cooke's classic 1959 hit "Wonderful World," the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, "Don't know much about history ... Don't know much about geography."
The American pill bug
August 8, 2013
We all run across the pill bug in our gardens. At the first sign of danger, the tiny paranoid crustacean suddenly turns into a ball -- in hopes danger will have passed when he unrolls.
Is populism dead?
August 1, 2013
Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not seem to have made inroads with the traditional Republican and Democrat establishments.
Back to our 20th-century future
July 25, 2013
Tribune Content Agency
The strange case of Mexican emigration
July 18, 2013
There are many strange elements in the current debate over illegal immigration, but none stranger than the mostly ignored role of Mexico.
Hate thought
July 11, 2013
When do insensitive words destroy reputations?
The press and Dr. Faustus
July 4, 2013
In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants.
How will America hold together?
June 27, 2013
By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections.
When untruth undermines democracy
June 20, 2013
Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble.
America's vast margin of error
June 13, 2013
The Obama administration is facing scandals everywhere -- using the IRS to punish political enemies, seizing the phone records of Associated Press and Fox News reporters, monitoring phone and email accounts of millions, and making up stories about what happened in Benghazi.
The stagnant Mediterranean
June 6, 2013
GIBRALTAR -- From the heights of Gibraltar you can see Africa about nine miles away to the south -- and gaze eastward on the seemingly endless Mediterranean that stretches 1,500 miles to Asia beyond. Mare Nostrum, "our sea," the Romans called the deep blue waters that allowed Rome to unite Asia, Africa and Europe for half a millennium under a single prosperous, globalized civilization.
The old order is dying
May 30, 2013
Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.
Paranoid or prescient?
May 23, 2013
Government is now so huge, powerful and callous that citizens risk becoming proverbial serfs without the freedoms guaranteed by the Founders.
It's 1973 all over again
May 16, 2013
In Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change transparency to Washington. Five years later, those vows are in shambles.
Hoping for change in Syria
May 9, 2013
Remember when President Obama used to warn Syria's Bashar al-Assad to stop his mass killing and step down?
The monotonous Middle East
May 2, 2013
Since antiquity, the Middle East has been the trading nexus of three continents -- Asia, Europe and Africa -- and vibrant birthplace to three of the world's great religions.
The D-word
April 25, 2013
Deportation has become a near-taboo word. Yet the recent Boston bombings inevitably rekindle old questions about the way the U.S. admits, or at times deports, foreign nationals.
Postmodern prudes
April 18, 2013
More than 500 people were murdered in Chicago last year. Yet Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to berate the fast food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing "Chicago values" -- apparently because its founder does not approve of gay marriage.
Iran's North Korean future
April 11, 2013
The idea of a nuclear Iran -- and of preventing a nuclear Iran -- terrifies security analysts.
After Obama
April 4, 2013
We can imagine what lies ahead in 2017 -- no matter the result of either the 2014 midterm elections or the 2016 presidential outcome.
Iraq a convenient scapegoat
March 28, 2013
Bring up Iraq -- and expect to end up in an argument. Conservatives are no different from liberals in rehashing the unpopular war, which has become a sort of whipping boy for all our subsequent problems.
America's big fat advantage
March 21, 2013
For all the Obama-era talk of decline, there is at least one reason why America probably won't, at least not quite yet.
From affirmative action to diversity
March 15, 2013
Sometime in the new millennium, "global warming" evolved into "climate change." Amid growing controversies over the planet's past temperatures, Al Gore and other activists understood that human-induced "climate change" could better explain almost any weather extremity -- droughts or floods, too much heat or cold, hurricanes and tornadoes.
From affirmative action to diversity
March 14, 2013
Sometime in the new millennium, "global warming" evolved into "climate change." Amid growing controversies over the planet's past temperatures, Al Gore and other activists understood that human-induced "climate change" could better explain almost any weather extremity -- droughts or floods, too much heat or cold, hurricanes and tornadoes.
The California 'Mordida'
March 7, 2013
California now works on the principle of the mordida, or "bite." Its government assumes that it can take something extra from residents for the privilege of living in their special state.
American recessional
February 28, 2013
Republicans and Democrats are blaming one another for impending cuts to the defense budget brought about by sequestration. But with serial annual deficits of $1 trillion-plus and an aggregate debt nearing $17 trillion, the United States -- like an insolvent Rome and exhausted Great Britain of the past -- was bound to re-examine its expensive overseas commitments and strategic profile.
Gilded class warriors
February 21, 2013
In his first term President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the one-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha's Vineyard and the nation's most exclusive golf courses.
Why do societies give up?
February 14, 2013
Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline?
Incoherent immigration reform
February 7, 2013
Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up.
War is like rust
January 31, 2013
War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm.
Europe's wishes came true
January 24, 2013
Almost a decade ago, Europeans and many progressive Americans were lamenting how the United States was going to miss out on the 21st-century paradigm symbolized by the robust European Union. Neanderthal Americans were importing ever more oil while waging a costly "war on terror" and fighting two conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our budget deficit in 2003 hit $374 billion.
The war between the amendments
January 17, 2013
The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives; it also pits the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution against each other.
When big deficits became good
January 10, 2013
As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt ceiling: "Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.'"
The Great New-Year Stampede
January 3, 2013
There is a new-year stampede developing that we have not seen for a long time.
2012: When dreams died
December 27, 2012
The year 2012 saw the triumph of cold reality over pie-in-the-sky dreams.
The new racial derangement syndrome
December 20, 2012
There is a different sort of racialist derangement spreading in the country -- and it is getting ugly.
Let the real fat cats pay their fair share
December 13, 2012
Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not "paying their fair share"? The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500 million)? The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50 million)? Neither seems to have heard the president's earlier warning that, "at a certain point you've made enough money."
The Kingdom of Fairness
December 6, 2012
We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back.
T-ball war in the Middle East
November 29, 2012
Classical explanations of conventional wars run something like this: An aggressor state seeks political advantage through military force. It has a hunch that the threatened target will likely either make concessions to avoid losing a war, or, if war breaks out, the resulting political gains will be worth the military costs to achieve victory.
Let Obama be Obama
November 22, 2012
After his party's devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was re-elected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the Dream Act amnesty for illegal immigrants, and as callous in battling the federal takeover of health care.
Oh, we forgot to tell you ...
November 15, 2012
The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, etc.) wins re-election, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years -- mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the Iraqi insurgency and Hurricane Katrina.
Groundhog Day in America
November 8, 2012
Barack Obama won a moderately close victory over Mitt Romney on Tuesday. But oddly, nothing much has changed. The country is still split nearly 50/50. There is still a Democratic president, and an almost identically Democratic Senate at war with an identically Republican House, in a Groundhog Day America.
The uncool president
November 1, 2012
In 2008, Barack "No Drama" Obama was the coolest presidential candidate America had ever seen -- young, hip, Ivy League, mellifluous and black, with a melodic and exotic name. Rock stars vied to perform at his massive rallies, where Obama often began his hope-and-change sermons by reminding the teary-eyed audience what to do in case of mass fainting.
What the debates taught us
October 25, 2012
The president of the United States in the last debate chose to go on the attack against his challenger, Mitt Romney -- and once again largely failed to convince the American people that he was the more presidential alternative.
A bright and shining Libyan lie
October 18, 2012
Almost everything we have been told about Libya over the last two years is untrue.
Left wants multiculturalism to trump free speech
October 5, 2012
The American Left used to champion free expression. We were lectured -- correctly -- that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we found wrong and objectionable.
Election could mirror 1980 race
September 28, 2012
There was only one presidential debate in 1980 between challenger Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter. Just two days before the Oct. 28 debate, Carter was eight points ahead in the Gallup poll. A week after the debate, he lost to Reagan by nearly ten percentage points.
Middle East madness
September 21, 2012
Last week, Muslim mobs took to the streets to murder the American ambassador in Libya and three of his staffers. American embassies were attacked from Egypt to Yemen.
Let Bush be
September 14, 2012
The theme of the president's 2012 re-election campaign is that George W. Bush left such a terrible mess that Barack Obama could hardly be expected to clean it up in four years.
The Obama hare and Romney the tortoise
September 7, 2012
The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop's classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls -- only to fall back to about even as the attention fades.
The Obama hare and Romney the tortoise
September 7, 2012
The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop's classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls -- only to fall back to about even as the attention fades.
The Humpty-Dumpty Middle East
August 31, 2012
The United States is backing off from the Middle East -- and the Middle East from the United States.
Eating America's seed corn
August 24, 2012
As gas prices climb back toward $4 a gallon, the Obama administration -- facing a tough re-election campaign and rising Middle East tensions -- is once again considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. For years, administrations have bought and stored oil for emergencies, in fear of a cutoff of imported oil, as happened during the Arab embargo of 1973-74.
There is no California
August 17, 2012
Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.
Who gets a pass?
August 10, 2012
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently said of the Chick-fil-A fast-food franchise that "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago's values." Why? Because Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy is on record as being opposed to gay marriage -- as is close to half the U.S. population, according to polls. The mayors of Boston and San Francisco also suggested that the company isn't welcome in their cities.
100 days is a long time
August 3, 2012
The presidential election is about 100 days away. President Obama and Mitt Romney are roughly even in the various polls, with Obama holding slight leads in the key swing states.
Iraqi ironies
July 27, 2012
Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists.
Blowing up history
July 20, 2012
In the Arabic media, there are reports that Muslim clerics -- energized by the sudden emergence of Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood -- are now agitating to demolish the Egyptian pyramids. According to agitated imams, the Pharaohs' monuments represent "symbols of paganism" from Egypt's pre-Islamic past and therefore must vanish.
The world is changing minute by minute
July 13, 2012
We are witnessing a seismic shift in global affairs. The shake-up is a perfect storm of political, demographic and technological change that will soon make the world as we have known it for the last 30 years almost unrecognizable.
Supreme Court hypocrisies
July 6, 2012
Until last week, Chief Justice John Roberts was vilified as the leader of a conservative judicial cabal poised to destroy the Obama presidency by overturning the federal takeover of health care. But with his unexpected affirmation, Roberts suddenly was lauded as the new Earl Warren -- an "evolving" conservative who at last saw the logic of liberal big government.
Legal illegal immigration
June 29, 2012
President Obama recently issued an edict exempting an estimated 800,000 to 1 million illegal aliens from the consequences of federal immigration law. Ostensibly that blanket amnesty applies to those who arrived before the age of 16 and are younger than 30; who are in, or graduated from, high school or have served in the military; and who have not been convicted of a felony or multiple misdemeanors. And while most Americans sympathize with helping those who were brought into the United States as toddlers, raised as de facto Americans and followed the rules, the policy of exempting hundreds of thousands en masse in the long run may create far more problems than it solves.
Greece alone and broke -- again
June 22, 2012
The recent indecisive Greek elections could be summed up by two general themes: Greeks want to stay in, and expect help from, the eurozone. But they still do not want to take the necessary medicine to stop borrowing billions of euros from northern Europeans, who want a radical Greek reform of the tax code, deregulation of labor laws, fiscal discipline, massive cuts in bureaucracy, and greater transparency -- all unlikely given Greek history and contemporary culture.
The new American Helots
June 15, 2012
Ancient Sparta turned its conquered neighbors into indentured serfs -- half free, half slave. The resulting Helot underclass produced the food of the Spartan state, freeing Sparta's elite males to train for war and the duties of citizenship.
From hope and change to fear and smear
June 8, 2012
Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.
Culture still matters
June 1, 2012
RUDESHEIM, Germany -- This week I am leading a military history tour on the Rhine River from Basel, Switzerland, to Amsterdam. You can learn a lot about Europe's current economic crises by just ignoring the sophisticated barrage of news analysis and instead watching, listening, and talking to people as you go down river.
The bad/good idea of removing Assad
May 25, 2012
Who could not despise the tottering Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria?
Let sleeping Germans lie
May 18, 2012
The newly elected French Socialist president, Francois Hollande, is warning Germany that Mediterranean ideas of "growth," not Germanic "austerity," should be the new European creed. No surprise there -- reckless debtors often blame their own past imprudence on greedy creditors, especially if the latter are supposed to be guilt-ridden over causing two world wars.
Chameleon Nation
May 10, 2012
Sometimes a trivial embarrassment can become a teachable moment. It was recently revealed that Harvard professor and U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren had self-identified as a Native American for nearly a decade -- apparently to enhance her academic career by claiming minority status. Warren, a blond multimillionaire, could not substantiate her claim of 1/32 Cherokee heritage. (And would it have reflected any better on her if she could have?) Instead, she fell back on the stereotyped caricature that she had "high cheekbones."
Cabinets gone wild
May 3, 2012
We've had some unusual Cabinet secretaries in past administrations -- Earl Butz, John Mitchell and James Watt come to mind -- but never anything quite like the present bunch.
Decline or decadence?
April 26, 2012
Almost daily we read of America's "waning power" and "inevitable decline," as observers argue over the consequences of defense cuts and budget crises.
When administrations implode
April 19, 2012
Administration meltdowns are hardly novel. In almost every presidency there comes a moment when sheer chaos takes hold, whether self-induced or as a result of an outside crisis.
Enemies of the people
April 12, 2012
In 2008, a mostly unknown Barack Obama ran for president on an inclusive agenda of "hope and change." That upbeat message was supposed to translate into millions of green jobs, fiscal sobriety, universal health care, a resetting of Bush foreign policy, and racial unity.
Freedom or Fairness in 2012?
April 5, 2012
2012 should prove to be an ideological election about the economy. Not all campaigns are so clear cut. Sometimes moderate Republicans raise taxes (like George H.W. Bush did); at other times, pragmatic Democrats cut spending (like Bill Clinton did).
The second oil revolution
March 29, 2012
The world was reinvented in the 1970s by soaring oil prices and massive transfers of national wealth. It could be again if the price of petroleum crashes -- a real possibility given the amazing estimates about the new gas and oil reserves on the North American continent. The Canadian tar sands, deepwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, horizontal drilling off the eastern and western American coastlines, fracking in once-untapped sites in North Dakota, and new pipelines from Alaska and Canada could within a decade double North American gas and oil production.
Faith-based energy policy
March 22, 2012
When the summer driving season starts soon, and tension heats up over Iran, gas may reach $5 a gallon. Nothing bothers voters more than paying an extra $20 or $30 every time they fill up. In times like these, they soon might prefer even an oilman in the White House to an ideologue whose opposition to new oil development seems more religious than empirically based.
Who's to blame in California?
March 15, 2012
In so-called "March in March" protests, thousands of students in California universities recently demonstrated in outrage over spiraling tuition costs.
Sick and tired of the Middle East
March 8, 2012
Americans -- left, right, Democrats and Republicans -- are all sick of thankless nation-building in the Middle East. Yet democratization was not our first choice, but rather a last resort after prior failures.
History never quite ends
March 1, 2012
The European Union and the United Nations, as well as globalization and advanced technology, were all supposed to trump age-old cultural, geographical and national differences and bring people together.
Jeremy Lin: Achievement trumps identity politics
February 23, 2012
Jeremy Lin is the New York Knicks basketball sensation whose so far brief but amazing performance on the court has set the world on fire in a mere month.
Please, a little honesty about illegal immigration
February 16, 2012
President Barack Obama recently assured El Salvador that the United States would not deport more 200,000 Salvadorans residing illegally in the United States. As the election nears, and the president looks to court Hispanic voters, he also created a new position of "public advocate" for illegal immigrants. His duties would appear to be to advocate that millions circumvent, rather than follow, current federal law.
Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0
February 9, 2012
On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a "reset" policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration's inability to finesse "soft power" had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy.
The un-Obama
February 1, 2012
Barack Obama's favorability in the polls falls when he is himself -- overexposed, hard left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion.
Fidelity and the presidency
January 26, 2012
The news media seem obsessed with the serial affairs of a younger Newt Gingrich back in the last century. The anger of his second of three wives mysteriously became national news on ABC's "Nightline" on the eve of the South Carolina primary. Millions watched Mrs. Gingrich II complain that Newt and the present Mrs. Gingrich III had done to her (while ill) just about the same thing that she and Newt had earlier done to Mrs. Gingrich I (while ill).
Civilization in reverse
January 19, 2012
In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount.
Defense spending is a shovel-ready investment
January 12, 2012
President Obama just ordered massive cutbacks in defense spending, eventually to total some $500 billion. There is plenty of fat in a Pentagon budget that grew after 9/11, but such slashing goes way too far.
2011: Out with a whimper, not a bang
January 5, 2012
It proved as hard to break up the bankrupt European Union as it was to create it. For all the hundreds of stories predicting the imminent end of the union, insolvent Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain still hung in. Apparently if these debtors keep promising to end their spendthrift ways, quit calling the historically sensitive Germans bad names, and welch only on serial billion-euro loans -- rather than default all at once on massive trillion-euro obligations -- the Germans will keep doling out enough money for the EU to whimper on a bit longer.
The new old Europe
December 29, 2011
Nearly 10 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to "Old Europe." How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us "old" when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration!
Two bad September days
December 22, 2011
Two terrible September days sum up the first decade of the new American millennium.
The Hundred Years' German War
December 15, 2011
The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel without firing a shot.
Oil-rich America?
December 8, 2011
There is a revolution going on America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests.